Redevelopment of St. Pete's former police HQ to begin construction
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Feb 27, 2024

The redevelopment of St. Petersburg's former police headquarters will break ground Wednesday.

Orange Station is in the city's Edge district and will be home to an Autograph Collection boutique hotel and 125,000 square feet of office space. It will also include a parking garage with 14,000 square feet of retail space and The Wye, a 42-unit apartment building designated for workforce housing.

The project team — called Edge Central Development Partners — is comprised of DDA Development, J Square Developers, Backstreets Capital and Ellison Development, along with Place Architecture.

It will be the first multitenant office space to break ground in the urban core in nearly four decades and the first four-star hotel to break ground since the Vinoy Resort and Golf Club opened in 1926.

Plans originally included 61 condominiums, but the development team scrapped the condos in 2023.

The property will also be home to a monument in honor of St. Pete's Courageous 12, a group of 12 Black police officers in the 1960s who filed a discrimination lawsuit to gain equal authority and the same rights as white police officers.